Google blocks 270m gambling ads using AI
Table of contents
- Google removed 270.7 million gambling and gaming advertisements in 2025, according to the company’s annual Ads Safety Report, ranking the category ninth among all banned ad types.
- Gemini-powered safety systems intercepted more than 99% of policy-violating ads before they reached users, out of a total of 8.3 billion ads blocked or removed across all categories.
- Regulators in Brazil, the UK, and Europe have stepped up pressure on Google over the continued spread of unlicensed betting content online.
Google has blocked or removed 270.7 million gambling and gaming advertisements in 2025, according to its annual Ads Safety Report published on 16 April 2026, as regulators across multiple jurisdictions intensify pressure on major technology platforms over illegal betting promotion.
AI powered crackdown
The figures show that gambling was the ninth largest category of banned ads, with 270.7 million removed, and the third largest category for restricted ads at 123.9 million.
The removals form part of a broader enforcement effort: Google blocked or removed more than 8.3 billion advertisements over the course of 2025, with a further 4.8 billion restricted rather than removed entirely, eclipsing the 5.1 billion blocked or removed in 2024 and the 5.5 billion taken down in 2023.
The scale of enforcement was driven largely by the company’s Gemini AI system, though Google attributes its overall safety operation to a combination of AI tools, human review teams, and its advertiser verification program.
Over 99% of the ads blocked or removed in 2025 were stopped before they were ever seen by anyone, setting a new benchmark compared with prior years.
Keerat Sharma, VP and General Manager of Ads Privacy and Safety at Google, said:
“Our teams have long used advanced AI to identify and stop scammers, and Gemini takes that work even further. Our models analyze hundreds of billions of signals — including account age, behavioral cues and campaign patterns — to stop threats before they reach people.
“Unlike earlier keyword-based systems, our latest models better understand intent, helping us spot malicious content and preemptively block it, even when it’s designed to evade detection.”
Sharma noted that bad actors are using generative AI to automate deceptive advertising campaigns at scale, representing one of the key trends Google’s safety teams have been working to combat.
On the publisher side, Google took action against 9.7 million web pages offering paid online gambling in breach of existing policies, ranking fifth among all sectors by page-level violations.
Among the core offenses were pages promoting unlicensed operators, running misleading offers, or deliberately targeting restricted audiences, including sites seeking to compel self-excluded gamblers to continue wagering at offshore platforms.
Gemini also helped Google act on more than four times as many user reports as the previous year, and the company reduced incorrect advertiser suspensions by 80%.
Regulatory pressure grows
Regulatory attention on gambling advertising has intensified across multiple markets, including the UK, Brazil, the Netherlands and Australia, with authorities raising concerns about the visibility of both licensed and unlicensed betting content online.
In Brazil, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security wrote to Google and Apple requesting clarifications about the availability of unlicensed betting applications in their app stores.
The Secretariat of Prizes and Bets, Brazil’s betting regulator, had not granted licenses to the apps identified. The ministry ordered both companies to submit updated lists of all programs in the lottery, betting, and casino categories, along with explanations of their screening processes.
In the UK, scrutiny over the growth of the black market is intensifying pressure on Google to act. The UK Gambling Commission contacted Google to have unlicensed operators removed from its search listings and, in October 2025, provided the company with a list of 339,757 URLs belonging to unlicensed betting sites, with around 287,000 subsequently deleted.
Google Ireland announced in January that advertising requirements would become more stringent from March 2026, with tighter certification requirements for advertisers operating across European markets.
Questions remain
Despite the scale of enforcement, significant transparency gaps persist. Google did not identify how many of the gambling-related violations involved licensed versus unlicensed operators. It also did not disclose if any violations occurred in jurisdictions with specific restrictions on gambling advertising.
Regulators have pointed to this lack of granularity as a barrier to meaningful accountability.The broader message from Google’s 2025 report is that ad safety is increasingly an ecosystem-wide issue.
The company is now assessing not only advertiser compliance, but also whether the environment in which an ad appears meets policy standards. This approach places both advertisers and publishers under scrutiny.
For licensed operators, the continued growth of AI-driven enforcement carries direct commercial implications. Tighter pre-submission review, stricter certification regimes in Europe from 2026, and mounting pressure on app stores in Brazil signal that compliant businesses will need to invest further in ensuring their campaigns and affiliate networks meet evolving platform requirements.
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About the author
Maria Steriopol
Maria is a Certified Clinical & Family Systemic Psychologist with extensive experience in understanding human behaviour. With four years in the iGaming industry, she specializes in treating addictions, including gambling addiction, and applies her expertise to promote responsible gaming. At iGaming Republic, Maria advises on editorial strategy to ensure content upholds the highest standards of player protection.
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